U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered only six immigrants on the U.S-Mexico border in the first half of fiscal year 2018 whose names were on a federal government list of known or suspected terrorists, according to CBP data as of May 2018 obtained by NBC News.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters on Monday the exact number, which NBC News is first to report, was classified but that she was working on making it public.

Overall, 41 people on the Terrorist Screening Database were encountered at the southern border from Oct. 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, but 35 of them were U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. Six were classified as non-U.S. persons.

On the northern border, CBP stopped 91 people listed in the database, including 41 who were not American citizens or residents.

Border patrol agents, separate from CBP officers, stopped five immigrants on the database over the same time period, but it was unclear from the data which ones were stopped at the northern border versus the southern border.

The White House has used the 4,000 figure to make its case for building a wall on the southwest border and for closing the government until Congress funds it. They have also threatened to call a national emergency in order to get over $5 billion in funding for the wall.

What’s the Criteria for Getting on the Watch List?

According to a 2013 watch list guideline produced by the Terrorist Screening Center and obtained by The Intercept, engaging in terrorism or having a direct connection to a terrorist organization is not necessary for inclusion on the list. Parents, spouses, siblings, children and “associates” of a suspected terrorist can appear on the list without any suspicion of terrorist involvement. “Irrefutable evidence” of terrorist activity and connections is also not necessary, the document states. Reasonable suspicion is sufficient, though this isn’t clearly defined.

“These lists are horribly imprecise,” a former federal prosecutor, who asked to remain anonymous, told WIRED. “They are based on rumor and innuendo, and it’s incredibly easy to get on the list and incredibly difficult to get off the list. There’s no due process for getting off the list.”

The guidelines also reveal that the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism can temporarily authorize placing entire “categories” of people on to the No-Fly and Selectee lists based on “credible intelligence” that indicates a certain category of individuals may be used to conduct an act of terrorism.

“Instead of a watch list limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” Hina Shamsi, head of the ACLU’s National Security Project, told The Intercept. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.”

Wrong. The best way to read it: Border authorities encountered 6 with names sufficiently similar to one of the hundreds of thousands on multiple US Government watchlists. Senator Ted Kennedy, whose name resembled a watchlist entry, would have told you how fool-proof this is. https://t.co/wKbrlpB0Rn

On the northern border, CBP stopped 91 people listed in the database, including 41 who were not American citizens or residents.

So that’s 41 on the northern border with Canada versus 6 on the southern Border with Mexico. So if the President wants $5.7 billion for a wall across the southern border with Mexico to keep terrorists out, that’s $950 million per suspected terrorist. That’s certainly a fiscally conservative position that any Republican could support…

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00Adam L Silvermanhttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgAdam L Silverman2019-01-07 17:10:542019-01-07 17:33:12Breaking News: We Now Have the Official Numbers of People on the Terrorism Watchlist Stopped by Customs & Border Patrol at the Border

Preet Bharara @ PreetBharara
Terrorists have been caught at the border. Ahmed Ressam, who was al-Qaeda, plotted to blow up LAX in 1999. He attempted to cross the border into the US, car loaded with explosives. It was the Canadian border.

On the northern border, CBP stopped 91 people listed in the database, including 41 who were not American citizens or residents.

I understand that Canada has rebuilt their Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve in direct contravention to arms limitation treaties. Will aggressive poutine deployment be far behind? We must look to our defenses!

I'm waiting to hear back from ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox broadcast about whether they will carry Trump's prime time address tomorrow night. The networks don't automatically say yes when a president asks for airtime.

TV exec texts: "He calls us fake news all the time, but needs access to airwaves… If we give him the time, he'll deliver a fact-free screed without rebuttal. And if we don't give him the time, he'll call every network partisan. So we are damned if we do and damned if we don't."

Someone on Twitter pointed out that Trump’s announcement itself is a lie, when he talks about the security crisis at the border. I cannot tell you how angry that constant refrain from him makes me, because I ACTUALLY LIVE IN A BORDER STATE AND SANCTUARY CITY AND THERE IS NO PROBLEM.

He does have it right that there is a humanitarian crisis, but it’s not the one he would claim.

Where is Great Northern $Wall$?
The report just means Trump will up his demand to $10 billion? For two walls.

Edit: Sorry, i am stupid. Trump would point out that I don’t know the construction business. You make one wall, part steel slats, part invisible aluminum, part handsome horizontal blinds of pleasing neutral color, and part bead curtain.

Then you MOVE it from South to North and back, depending on which direction Miller’s spray-on hair points on a given day. Or whatever hits the news that day.

How is that for Moar $Wall$? I’m submitting the moveable wall idea. Could also be used for California, which is totally out of control. I hear Trump is looking for a new homeland security secretary, or chief, or poohbah, or whatever it is.

@Ohio Mom: Since Adam is on this thread he will probably throw you a line. However for future reference, under “quick links” (to the right of the Balloon Juice logo) there is a link that says “contact us”. If you click on this you get a second clickable link for “contact a front pager”. You can use that drop down menu to contact AL or any other FPer.

Shocked, I’m shocked to find out that this was exactly what we thought it was!

Blackwater founder Erik Prince says Mueller questioned him about his secret meeting in the Seychelles islands with Putin ally Kirill Dmitriev. The purpose of the meeting was to establish a "backchannel" between Trump & the Kremlin. https://t.co/P4maNhgEIj

@Adam L Silverman:Doh, that figures (slaps hand to forehead as he sees the tiny image of the reporter in her twitter feed)…I must admit, though, I am entirely onboard with the way MSNBC (and I guess CNN though I don’t watch them as much) go straight to the source of reporting when discussing issues. They deserve all the praise in the world for that instead of just bringing in “talking heads.”

A man has found out the hard way that it’s a bad idea to try and rob an MMA athlete.

UFC fighter Polyana Viana was waiting outside her Rio de Janeiro apartment on Saturday, when the thief approached and threatened to take her phone.

Realising the danger, the Brazilian strawweight took matters into her own hands, using her MMA skills to drop the man and keep him immobilised until the police arrived. “He said: ‘Give me the phone. Don’t try to react, because I’m armed’,” Viana told MMA Junkie. “Then he put his hand over [a gun], but I realised it was too soft. [hardy har!] So I stood up. I threw two punches and a kick. He fell, then I caught him in a rear naked choke. Then I sat him down and said, ‘Now we’ll wait for the police.'”

Viana, 26, has a 10-2 MMA record. Her last fight ended in a decision loss to JJ Aldrich at UFC 227 last August.

@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): No, still several orders of magnitude greater. Slanders was off by a factor of 800ish. Voter fraud was something like 35 instances from several billion (with a B) ballots, so on the order of 10 exp 8 error in scale. So as you can see, criminals at the border is a substantially greater threat than voter fraud. //

When all this bullshit started on GWB’s watch, I was on the no fly list. Because my name is fairly common. I’ve known 2 other people with the same first name, same middle initial and same last name and we are no relation. I had to check in with a live person at the airport with 2 forms of ID just to get my boarding pass, let alone the security line, which was always fun. That doesn’t happen any more.

So I am off to make dinner, but I am curious how many of the folks on this thread agree with me that there is like a 50/50 chance that Trump’s network event tomorrow night just backfires horribly for him? Of course all the hardline MAGA mouth breathers will lap up his every word but beyond that echo chamber I am pretty sure that most, if not all, of the rest of us have come to the conclusion that if Trump’s mouth is open he is lying.

Laying all of his Border Bullshit out in the open for another fresh debunking–and this one will be pretty high profile since it is a nationwide address–has every chance of serving like bleach on germs.

@trollhattan:
She sounds like fun!
I’ve seen a couple of y tubes from russia with women dealing with assholes, and doing it quite well. One that comes to mind was a guy started giving a woman a hard time and she dropped him with one standing roundhouse kick to the head. He had no idea what hit him. She adjusted, and walked off like nothing had happened.

A stupid as he is he’s not dumb enough to go up against the National Championship. It was just a year ago that my doc told me not to go to the game because I was near pneumonia. Numbnuts went to pose for the natural anthem and the security FUBAR made people stand inf the fucking rain for three hours to get in. The $3k I sold my tickets for made it a bit better but fuck him anyway.

@Amir Khalid:
I could easily believe that.
My fun was that for a good part of the year, I boarded several flights a week. Flying went from being an annoyance of the job to being a major waste of my week and it had been bad when the security people were hired by the airport/airlines prior to the Totally Suck Ass Department.

Does anyone remember the case of a Malaysian academic who sued the US to get herself taken off the no-fly list? Her name was Rahinah Ibrahim. She was prevented from flying back to the US to finish her doctorate, and had to complete it remotely. I wonder what became of the lawsuit, and if she actually got taken off the list.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go after anybody on MSNBC except Morning Joseph. I know he had a back-and-forth with O”Donnell a few years ago and wound up sending a check (written on those wrestling people’s money) for his KIND fund

Meanwhile, the biggest increases in Trump’s net approval rating from November to December were in a combination of Republican and Democratic states. Trump’s rating jumped 5 percent in New Hampshire, which Clinton won in 2016, and North Dakota, which Trump won. Trump’s rating rose 4 percent in Maine, a Democratic state, as Morning Consult editor Cameron Easley noted.

@trollhattan:
I’m an old white guy, our names get scrubbed regularly. It’s the white haired grandmas and anyone with skin darker than summer sunlight that always have to go through hell to get on a plane. To be honest I have no idea why I stopped getting picked out. Maybe it was after the time the TSA was running a training session and one of the geniuses put a semi auto pistol in the hand grip of my computer bag so that when I went to pick it up I would grab the weapon first. I came within about 2 inches of having my hand on it before I saw it. My reaction was pure out loud sailor, “What the fuck!” Not sure they appreciated my language. Fuck them.

@Ruckus: I took a tour of PT 305 in New Orleans. What a craft, some guy owned a warehouse that the Navy gave them at the end of the war and it had crates of Packard V-12’s and he donated 3 to the museum. I was bummed we couldn’t go below deck but it was still cool.

@raven:
That looks like fun. Too bad they don’t repaint them like they were during the war.
People really should see what 5 guys with 6in wide x 1in thick heavy bristle brushes can do to a paint job. We stopped in the Azores to refuel and the captain made the deck crew paint both sides of the ship, all in one day. Which means that no prep was done. We then went through a 7 day storm that blew us off course by a few hundred miles and stripped off every square inch of new paint, of course taking some of the old with it. He wanted to look good pulling into port. We didn’t. He was a first class dumbshit. Not the first or the last of those.

@Adam L Silverman: On second thought, all the post has to say are words to this effect (edit as you wish): Cincinnati Meet-up: Anybody in the Cincinnati area want to welcome Steve in the ATL to CVG, specifically Blue Ash on either Monday, January 14 or Tuesday, January 15?

Ohio Mom suggests Slatts Pub on Cooper Road in downtown Blue Ash because it’s relatively quiet for a bar-restaurant but whatever works for everyone.

Leave your preferences for date, location and time in the comments. Doesn’t have to be in Blue Ash, that’s just where SITATL will be.

@raven: Recently learned of PT-305 rides on Lake Ponchartrain. Might visit New Orleans next year to see the National WW2 Museum and ride the boat, then drive to Pensacola to see the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

The millennium bomber got busted in Port Angeles arriving from Victoria BC.
Well, basically he ran away from the car when he lost his nerve, but the bomb was assembled in a Vancouver/Burnaby motel room.
Kind of hard to build a wall through the Strait of Georgia, seeing as it’s on average 500 feet deep.

@raven: that is so true. My Dad got special privileges — he got to deliver the mail, too. I think he thought that was the best job of his life. Although not always (Dear John, deaths, brothers or friends killed) but mostly just tearful joy for the boys that they all were

@Amir Khalid: I have a female friend, mid sixties, white woman, who has a pretty generic name (such as, for example, Ann Smith) and cannot board a plane without spending an hour or two with TSA agents, because apparently there is a person with the same name who did something (my friend has never been told what) to get their name on the watch list. This has been going on since the watch list started. For several years now she has been asking her family to come visit her here instead of her going to visit them there, because it’s frightening. Who knows what a bored or angry, poorly trained TSA person might decide to do?

@karen marie: Has your friend tried contacting one of her Senators or her Representative? That’s the sort of constituent service their staffs like to do, and they will have offices throughout her state. Just goggle the Congressperson’s name, and their contact information, including phone numbers, will be somewhere on the page.

The disparity between the Canadian and Mexican borders doesn’t surprise me at all. The only serious terrorist ever stopped at a US port of entry was the Millennium bomber in Port Angeles, Washington — at the ferry crossing from Victoria. Huge stretches of the northern border are pretty much wide open. There’s no rational reason why an overseas nutcase would choose the fortified south instead.

Even though it’s a bone of contention, Fork Belknap and Fort Peck and even Kahnewa:ke right on the border don’t face nearly the same chronic hassle as the Tohono O’ohdam on the southern border. It feels inevitable that they’ll have to deal with even more wall-building straight through their land, further cutting off Native communities in Mexico.